Regaining my lost voice

Welcome to this very first instalment of Pragmatic Insights, the newest blog providing commentary on socio, political and economic events taking place around the world with a general bearing on Africa and a specific focus on Zimbabwe. I intend to use this blog as a platform for expressing and sharing my ideas on a wide range of issues and events concerning Africa and specific African countries and for generating debate and dialogue on opportunities and options to heal the African continent of its many and well recognised and acknowledged afflictions and improve the welfare of its citizens.

At a more personal level, I intend to use the blog to regain my lost voice and, once again, make a public contribution on matters of critical importance to my people in my irreverent and inimitable manner. Perhaps I should, at this very early stage, give a short introduction of myself. In the early 1980’s, as a young man with nothing much more than a small gift of written expression, I was invited by Geoff Nyarota, then editor of the Chronicle newspaper in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to write a weekly column for the newspaper as a successor of Bill Saidi (a veteran Zimbabwean newspaper editor) who had left to take up promotion elsewhere in the newspaper stable.

For more than four years the Farai Pasipanodya Weekend Column entertained readers covering a wide range of topics from light hearted social events to serious political and economic issues. But then the 80’s were a time of many exciting developments for my country and other not so exciting events, as history was later to reveal. It was a time when the country enjoyed high levels economic growth and freedom of expression – a time when the media could make or break careers. My compatriots with good memory will recall the exposure of the infamous Willowgate scandal which exposed high level corruption and resulted in the resignation (and one suicide) of several ministers of Robert Mugabe’s government.

Oh yes, there was a time in my country when ministers resigned if and when their misdemeanours were exposed and, believe me, one committed suicide in the well known tradition of the Japanese. That is no longer the case. Now ministers get promoted for being corrupt, incorrigible and incompetent. Just look at the mess that Zimbabwe is now in, yet there is a government of well paid ministers. What are they doing, when the country has all but collapsed? There was a time when most of the present jokers of ministers would have been gently persuaded, and probably would have accepted, to drink poison or to put a bullet through their heads as atonement for their sins. Now no longer! But this is the subject of another day and time.

To get back to my brief biography, after I left Bulawayo in 1987 to take up a new position in Harare, it became increasingly difficult to sustain my weekly column. Remember that was the time the manual typewriters and telex machines were the state of the art journalistic paraphernalia. Imagine, I would bash out my piece on my lovely portable typewriter and send it to Herald House (that was the Chronicle’s head office, if you really need to know) where some overworked telex operator would retype the piece and then transmit it to the Chronicle office in Bulawayo.

If you consider what is happening now, that period was the equivalent of the Stone Age. Now the typewriter has been replaced by the computer and there is now email in place of the telex machine. I can even bash out a piece on a hand held device and zap it instantaneously to any destination using a mobile device such as a Blackberry. Such are the times. Ok, where was I? Oh yes, I was still introducing myself.

While in Harare, I whiled up my journalistic time in the late 80s writing columns for the Financial Gazette and the Independent, both business oriented weekly newspapers, and freelancing for a number of other newspapers and magazines include Parade Magazine. After that, I kind of lost my way, my voice, my interest (and whatever else one loses) as a writer and public commentator and pursued a career as a professional public policy advisor working mainly in African countries and, more recently, elsewhere around the world. So after almost twenty years in journalistic isolation (doing what President Mbeki famously called quiet diplomacy), I have decided to break my silence and regain my voice as a public commentator. And thank god to modern technology, I do not have to beholden myself to some newspaper editor to do so.

This blog represents my space and time for expression of my thoughts and feelings on events taking place in the world, in Africa and in my homeland of Zimbabwe. This blog will be my platform for indulging in serious and not so serious banter on social, political, economic and other issues and events that have a bearing on Africa. It is an analytic and witty expose of what is happening, why it is happening (from my pragmatic perspective) and who are behind the events – the culprits and the benefactors, the heroes and villains, the wise and the foolish, the beauties and the beasts.

More importantly, I will seek to suggest or provide solutions by objectively examining options on the way forward and opportunities for change. I will pose questions on and seek answers to why certain things are happening, when they are happening and what the consequences of the events are. Pragmatic Insights is not a partisan blog and I hold no brief for any particular political inclination, the left or the right. I will say things as I see them without fear or favour. I am not seeking political office (not yet anyway!) and am I using this blog to launch a political career. Of course, I am a political animal (who isn’t?) and I have strong political views. But this blog goes way beyond the basics and mechanics of politics.

The blog is intended to elevate discussion on African issues beyond the pedestrian and to challenge conventional wisdoms about what works or doesn’t work in Africa. It is about exploring ways in which brighter light can shine on the Dark Continent. It is about improving the lives and welfare of a people who have suffered untold injustices and misery for far too long. Africans endured more than two thousand years of slavery and, after that, close to a hundred years of colonial rule and exploitation. After the so called “independence”, they have languished under years of brutal dictatorships.

This blog intends to break from the stereotype that Africans tolerate injustice, mediocrity and impropriety. We have tolerated rigged elections (maybe not in all cases, but who cared anyway?), kleptocratic and despotic rule by leaders who care for nothing but self-enrichment and personal aggrandisement. This blog says no more to that, kwete ndaramba! My voice is back!